


1000-word flashfic - Ghost/Living Person AU Prompt

by Asynca



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Major character death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 13:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Angela is dead, and Fareeha is struggling to believe it. Tumblr prompt.





	1000-word flashfic - Ghost/Living Person AU Prompt

It was a moment in Fareeha’s life that would be forever branded into her memory—a moment carved into the very flesh of her brain that left a deep and permanent scar. That moment when she’d heard the newsreader say, “… _disaster at Overwatch Headquarters in Zurich…’_ ” and had glanced up at the news stream to see Angela’s face on the screen beside Jack’s and Gabriel’s with the text, “ _CONFIRMED CASUALTIES’._

Her vision had narrowed, her ears had rung. A thousand fantasies of their shared future she'd had been secretly imagining pushed their way to the forefront of her brain: a thousand first kisses. A thousand dates, a thousand weddings. Their children, strong and bright, destined to change the world just like their mamas would. Then, finally, growing old somewhere beautiful with the most beautiful woman in the world.

But Angela was dead.

She hadn’t believed it at first. She’d been on the first plane to Switzerland, she’d muscled her way through the armed federal police _and_ the search and rescue crews, brandishing her Overwatch badge and had combed every inch of every piece of rubble day and night for a sign Angela wasn’t buried there. It was only when she found Angela’s favourite ring—something that she never took off—that Fareeha realised it was true. Angela _was_ dead. She was dead forever, her body destroyed in a way that couldn’t be revived. Angela was gone.

Fareeha lived the next few months in a haze. Nothing felt real, nothing made sense. Overwatch was in disarray, so she spent more time doing security work; 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Sleeping, waking. Eating, working. Then she’d come home to her empty apartment and her empty message bank. People didn’t know what to say to her.

It was a year before Fareeha really thought about what happened; she’d noticed story in the newspaper titled ‘ _One Year After the Collapse: What Have We Learnt from the Fall of Overwatch_?’

 _Angela’s dead_ , she realised again, again receiving it like it was new information. _She’s really dead_. Part of Fareeha had still hoped she’d turn up unexpectedly; a knock on the door would be Angela coming to reassure her she was alright. Each new message might be Angela promising Fareeha it was a mix-up and she was alive. Angela would kiss her— _god_ she wished she’d kissed Angela when she had the chance!—and hold her, and tell her everything was alright. But it never was.

“She’s gone, Fareeha,” she just felt she had to say aloud to herself. “She’s gone forever. You have her ring to prove it.” To hammer home the message to herself, she went to find the ring.

The ring was where Fareeha had left it; in a makeshift box in Fareeha’s sock drawer. Fareeha had wanted to put it on display in an ornate box with a velvet cushion, but part of her had worried what Angela would read into that if she _did_ show up.

She lifted it out, sighing at herself. There was no point in leaving in the sock drawer any longer. 

Holding it up to the light, Fareeha examined it: the beautiful little plug-like engravings (Angela always liked jewellery that looked like tech, for some reason), the way the metal was worn where Angela gripped her staff, and the attention that had been put into protecting the ring from the elements. It actually… looked as if it might fit Fareeha? If only her little finger?

Fareeha had always imagined the moment she’d slip Angela’s ring onto her finger. She’d imagined it so many times in so many ways, she had a whole library full of beautiful images and thoughts to go with this action. Unable to stop herself, she let them rise again to her consciousness. 

They’d get married in the vast gardens of the first hospital Angela founded. It was an achievement Angela was so proud of, and the gardens were so colourful in spring, it made perfect sense. Fareeha would wear her Overwatch uniform, and Angela would wear—well, Fareeha couldn’t even imagine. Angela was so creative with ordinary party clothes, Fareeha couldn’t even conceive the sort of dress she’d come up with for her own wedding. But it would be incredible, and Fareeha would have to blink back tears as she was escorted to the altar. They’d have a secular wedding for the main ceremony (her mother would be disappointed if she’d had a Jewish rather than a proper Egyptian wedding, so it seemed safer to have neither), with a celebrant they both knew—maybe Zenyatta.

But the central image in Fareeha’s mind was the moment they’d turn to each other and have their hands bound together with red and gold ribbon as they made their promises. Fareeha had planned in great detail the promises she wanted to make to Angela; she could recite them even now as prepared to put on Angela’s ring.

Imagining it was really their wedding, imagining Angela’s tears of joy as she did so, Fareeha slipped Angela’s ring onto her little finger.

It fit; better than she’d thought it would. _I’ll never take it off_ , Fareeha decided, twisting it so the stone faced upward. Better on her finger than in a sock drawer.

As she did that, the stone—

— _lit up_?

Fareeha frowned. That didn’t make sense. Or—maybe it did? After all, she wouldn’t have put it past Angela at all to have tech embedded in her ring. Angela loved tech. Fareeha had never seen it light up on Angela, though. Perhaps she was just imagining things?

Fareeha was on her way back into the kitchen to look at the ring in the light when a dialog box from her own internal tech integration chip popped up in the air in front of her, startling her. She stopped before she collided with it.

 _“’Download peripheral data Y/N’”_ It prompted her. Down on her finger, the stone on the ring was flashing like a disk-drive read light.

Heart pounding, Fareeha selected ‘Y’ by reflex, without even thinking. 

The dialog box showed a progress slider while the ring flashed, and the chip embedded in her head beside her ear warmed with the data transfer just the way it did when she got it serviced and upgraded.

Then, the dialogue box read. “ _Transfer complete. Launch app Y/N’_ ”

Almost unable to breathe, Fareeha selected ‘Y’.

Instantaneously, the room filled with light as a holographic image solidified in front of her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to it—it was so bright!—and as she did, her stomach bottomed out before she even realised what she was looking at.

It was a perfect projection of Angela, perfect all the way down to how scrappy her ponytail looked after a long shift and the dark bags under her eyes. Perfect down to where she had her pager clipped to her pocket, and even a smudge of something on her cheek.

The projection looked just as shocked as Fareeha did. She reached out to Fareeha and began to ask something, but stopped immediately as soon as she saw her own holographic arm. Withdrawing it, she looked up at Fareeha, eyes wide.

“Angela?!” Fareeha managed, breathless. 

The hologram considered the tears on Fareeha’s cheeks, and then her eyes dipped to the ring on Fareeha’s finger. In the background, the news was playing a story on explosion in Zurich. Recognition settled on Angela’s features. Recognition, and panic. “Oh dear,” she said, sounding perfectly, perfectly like Angela. “What an awful way to find out my biodata ring works.”


End file.
